When I think about contraception, my thoughts generally run to things like this:
“Is this condom on inside-out? Oh, crap.”
“I guess IUD’s aren’t necessarily a good idea for some women unless they like bleeding from their vagina every day for six months.”
“Has anyone ever actually used a female condom?”
Over on Complementarian Loners, an MRA-adjacent “relationship” blog written by a couple of Catholic converts, the bitter divorced dude who calls himself 7man has some more, well, advanced ideas about contraception. By “advanced” I mean, of course, “odd and terrible.”
He starts off with this proposition:
A man and a woman cannot develop a great relationship if contraception is part of it or if they met while she was using hormonal artificial birth control. REAL committed, trusting, exclusive sexual intercourse is essential.
Oh, it gets weirder from there:
Birth Control is a misnomer since this is her speaking through her body saying, “I control when I will give birth, not God, not a man.” It doesn’t require any respect for fertility since fertility is subverted. This puts the woman in the dominant position and she then determines when and under what conditions she will ACQUIRE his seed rather than being open to RECEIVE. (Is woman not a vessel?)
I’m pretty sure a woman is a person, dude.
Usually the contraception is done by the woman, it messes with her body; she blocks the ability to receive and the whole exercise becomes taking pleasure from the other. Of course, she can always lie about taking it or not taking it. This is in essence lying with the body. A man can lie too if he withholds his gift by vasectomy or by condom.
In his profile on the blog, 7man refers to his ex-wife as “BatShitCrazy” (apparently that’s just one word now), but I think she demonstrated some pretty clearheaded and rational thinking in getting herself away from a guy who can refer to his semen as a “gift” without giggling.
[I]t is women acting as succubi. And so the ultimate end of a failed attempt to block PROCREATION is abortion. After all, God surely did not do his part and create a soul for the life that she did not intend to receive, right? Does her hamster prevent God from fulfilling his part of creation? Not likely! …
I am left with the impression that subverting fertility may be just as much an abomination to God as is divorce.
I hope you mention that right up top in your Match.com profile, dude, because that’s the sort of shit women need to know right off the bat before they send you any misguided “winks.”
Oh, and apparently men and women can’t have good sex unless the man controls everything and the woman cannot leave:
Can men and women have what they so deeply desire (in a relationship) while withholding the central gift of self? Have Christians stopped to consider the word PROCREATION? We participate in the CREATION of God in our act of sexual intercourse. We assist in CREATION of a body, but God provides the soul. CREATION is intended to occur in conjunction with a COVENANT. Can intercourse be unitive if this element is totally removed from the act of marriage, in the one-flesh-union?
A COVENANT is an OATH, a BINDING and a COMMITMENT. This is more than a contract or a whim. The sublime pleasure of sexual intercourse cannot happen when such aspects are blocked. The kind of fulfilling sex that every person longs for and rarely experiences is also precluded when the woman endeavors to control the relationship. In order for her to feel the fullness of the union, she must be claimed in a COVENANT to one man PERMANENTLY.
I can only imagine Mr. 7man explaining all this very earnestly to his date as they munch on breadsticks at the local Olive Garden, after which the unfortunate woman excuses herself to go to the ladies room and, as soon as she is out of his eyesight, slips out the back door of the restaurant and literally runs the entire way home.
7man closes with this little puzzler:
[S]uccumbing to passionate desire is easier without the risk of pregnancy and therefore commitment is not essential prior to the parting of thighs. Does this ever turn out for the good?
Yes. Yes it does.
MRAs only seem content if their penis can ruin someone’s life.
I see what you did there 7man.
god=man, man=god
Woman? Not so much.
This really seems to be the whole heart of his argument. Because if the answer is no, then absolutely nothing about his words makes the slightest iota of sense.
And the answer is NO, btw. In case you weren’t clear on that. (everybody here was clear on that–even the trolls, if they were honest)
I once had a date like that. In the middle of a conversation about an unrelated subject, he suddenly burst out with “abortion is against God’s plan!”
Anyway, that was the only date with that guy.
They don’t seem to understand that at the end of all this glorious seed-reception and God-trusting and trust and CREATION–there will be an actual child who requires 18+ years of care.
I don’t use contraception because I’m interested in the fucking symbolism. I use it because I’m not able to properly care for and raise a child.
Sometimes I really wonder if MRA posts are just an elaborate game of Mad Libs. It makes more sense than someone writing this sort of thing deliberately.
Oh, and I tried a female condom once. :/
It’s sort of an interesting concept, but the current state of the technology leaves you paying twice as much for a really awkward, unpleasant plastic bag. I was not converted.
So is contraception okay for us godless heathens? After all, you wouldn’t want MORE of us around, right?
Thanks for the publicity. I stand by my words (and CL has not slipped out the back door). CL is a woman which of course means she is a person but a certain part of her is still a vessel.
Um… Yeah. Pretty much.
Extreme religious fundamentalism needs to fuck off and die already. It’s crippling effects on the human mind produce some of the scariest people on the planet.
Same here. Good idea though and it would be nice to see someone attempt some improvements.
His post just begs to be read by Patrick Stewart. MRAs: florid and overblown to a man.
Yeah, I don’t get the niche for the female condom. It seems to me that it would in no way improve upon the male condom in terms of sensation for either partner. It would most likely be a lot more of an hassle to put on and more likely to slip or otherwise fail. And while I could see the point that having a cis woman in control of her own STI and birth prevention method if she’s in an heterosexual coupling with a cis man, that woman could still purchase male condoms herself to be in control and I doubt a man who would refuse to use it at her insistance would comply if she asked to wait while she slips in a female condom.
Is there some non “cis man with cis woman” couplings where the female condom would be a better fit for the situation that I’m not thinking of?
He’s a Catholic, right? Well, according to the Catechism, the rule book for Catholics, contraception isn’t a sin before marriage, as, according to it, premarital sex is wrong and isn’t any worse just because of birth control.
Now, you can argue that the whole idea of premarital sex being wrong is wrong, but he fails at his own religious world view.
^ Whatever else they may be I don’t think MRAs are overblown.
Just sayin’
It kind of makes me sad when someone is of the opinion that sex HAS to result in BABBY, it really isn’t fair to people who can’t afford to care for children, and it’s somewhat inconsiderate of those of us who don’t care to have children regardless.
Is he using “hamster” here in a sense that anybody else understands? Because I think he’s talking about “the hamster that runs in the wheel that powers your brain,” which is a pretty general idiom, but the term occupies a space in his narrative that would seem to indicate it stands for her cervix/vagina or something. Whatever she has that “refuses” a man’s “gift.”
Sounds like pretty standard Catholic anti-contraceptive ‘arguments’ actually. Seriously, this kind of thing is official doctorine from the church. The only contraceptive they endorse is the rhythm method, which is the least effective form of birth control. Apparently women can’t be trusted with control over their own bodies. She’s gotta have a man in charge!
So God created the Universe in six days and got a woman pregnant without any sex at all, but a condom or some hormone pills are an insurmountable barrier? Is God suddenly impotent?
Situations in which a woman cannot ask her partner to use a condom do to the constraints of culture and/or a relationship that is abusive. I don’t know I’d I’d call it a “niche” market exactly.
When I tried it, I was helping a friend who works in the field for an international aid organization.
I saw a female condom once. It was in a little plastic case dangling off a key chain. The case read something like “In Case of Emergency.” The year was, like, 1994.
I`m just really confused by the hamster. My birth control came with a Pap smear and an instructional leaflet; was it also supposed to come with a pet hamster?
Oy Catholics. All this lofty language about COMMUNION and COMMITMENT and what it really amounts to is women having kids they can’t afford (or have any energy for) until it kills them. What a beautiful celebration of love!
I saw a post about female condoms on Joe.My.God. the other day and lots of the gay men there liked them (apparently you have to remove the ring that fits against the cervix if you want to use them for anal whoopie) and liked that you can wash and reuse them, but weren’t so happy about the price. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen them for sale, but then again I haven’t looked too hard ’cause my partner doesn’t have any of the little swimmers.
And can I just say that what makes the best nookie for me is not having to worry about an unintended pregnancy?
Loner (before); “A woman should not use birth control, so I can give her the gift of my…I mean, God’s…seed.”
Loner (after); “Why should I pay child support for 18 years? She got herself pregnant!”
When I was taking Sex-Ed in middle school, I thought the female condoms that they showed us were kind of silly, and from the way they explained them it sounded like they were open at both ends and you had to kind of turn one end over to make a seal, and all I could help thinking was “why?”.